8 Skills That Every Enterprise UX Team Needs

3 years ago
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The growing popularity of UX as a profession does not necessarily mean that everything is rosy for UX teams in enterprise development groups. There is still a tendency to assume that “design” is the only part of the UX role that matters. This often leads to UX teams which cannot fulfil their duties to the organization effectively. To deliver enterprise benefits (and thus ROI) the team needs a deep set of skills beyond simple design.

In particular, there are 8 key skills that enable UX teams in the enterprise world to flourish:

User Research and User Profiling

User research is clearly important, without it you can’t possibly know what your users want. In the enterprise setting this should be supported with a strong understanding of business or industrial psychology. You want to be able to definitively get inside your user’s heads and understand their motivations at the deepest of levels. The more that you can do this, the easier it will become to drive projects that meet the user’s needs.

The extension of this is the ability to deliver accurate user profiles to the business. The larger an enterprise is, the less you are going to be able to rely on evangelism to get the message home. User profiles can be displayed in all relevant places and ensure the whole team is working together.

Interaction Design

Interaction design is “design” but not as most non-UX professionals see design. The way that your users interact with your product is often a critical selling point for your products. The interaction designer should also be able to assist with the creation of use cases and be able to work with the rest of the team to turn these use cases into valuable tools that inform the creation of information architecture and elements of the UI.

Summary

UX is an essential to product development but only when it’s done well in its entirety. If you want to get the best returns from an investment in a UX team; you need more than UX design as your focus. The 8 disciplines above combine with UX design to create better user experiences.